


Pins and Needles

by amydyersgreatblueyonder (Mor)



Category: In the Flesh (TV)
Genre: Angst, Christmas, Drunkenness, Ficlet, Fluff and Angst, In The Flesh Secret Santa, M/M, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 11:58:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2850059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mor/pseuds/amydyersgreatblueyonder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Christmas Eve with Gary Kendal and Kieren Walker.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pins and Needles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liliaeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liliaeth/gifts).



> I really hope they like it.
> 
> I would like to thank a thousand times [**angels_of_roarton**](http://oaktrees.co.vu/) and [**succubae**](http://archiveofourown.org/users/succubae/pseuds/succubae) (who wrote a great Gary Kendal fic, check it out) for betaing this ficlet.  
>  Also, feel free to check out [my ITF & Mental Health tumblr](http://amydyersgreatblueyonder.tumblr.com)!
> 
> Any criticism is welcome as long as it stays cordial and constructive.

Prologue

 

***

 

Kieren couldn’t go home.

Not yet. Not until his family had finished eating and all that was left to do was wish everyone a good night and bury himself under the covers, longing for a warm feeling of any kind, until the next day and the dreadful gifts of knitted socks followed by visiting the aunts and uncles and cousins.

 

He had felt drawn to the Roarton cemetery, not out of some morbid attraction, but more from a need for quiet and remembering.

 

‘Gary?’

 

Gary staggered around, squinting.

Kieren took a step forward, consciously raising his hands, palms flat, near his shoulders.

 

‘Am I dead?’ Gary said, his breath making little silver clouds under the moonlight.

 

Kieren looked at the gravestone casting a shadow onto Gary’s stout legs.

‘You’re drunk.’ Kieren said, taking another step forward.

 

Gary’s face was barely there. In the night, it was impossible to tell if he was smiling or opening his mouth wide to let out a scream.

 

‘I think I lost meself.’ Gary said, dropping something, letting it disappear against the dark of the crisp grass. ‘Can you get me home?’

 

His little voice made Kieren doubt he was looking at Gary Kendal, made him believe the night had hidden a small child, that the moon had shaped an infant into a small scruffy looking man.

Kieren took another step, and noticed a glinting object in Gary’s left hand. A shard.

 

‘Can you get me home?’ The grown child said again, as an echo.

 

‘If you’ll let me.’ Kieren said, reaching for the broken glass.

 

******

 

Christmas Eve

 

***

 

Kieren was cleaning up the last of the pint glasses behind the bar.

He had been cleaning it for the past thirty minutes, staring at the cheap plastic clock on the wall to his left, waiting for the little needle to hit eight.

 

The Legion was empty, except for Gary Kendal who kept bringing his pint to his lips at regular intervals. Just the movement, almost in tune with the minute needle of the clock, the last of his beer swivelling, mixing with some spit, at the bottom of his glass.

He had been “drinking” it for the past hour, since Dean paid for their drinks and left, wishing his mate a merry Christmas and briefly nodded to Kieren after making sure Gary had gone back to staring at the dartboard.

 

As the clock struck eight, Kieren set the glass he’d been cleaning down with a satisfying clunk and exhaled as loud as he could.

 

Gary didn’t move, his own glass an inch from his lips, the discoloured drink stilling at an angle at the bottom of the pint.

Kieren threw the dish towel on his left shoulder and wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist.

 

‘Eight.’ He said, feeling the apprehension set in his stomach, just above his navel.

 

Gary didn’t move, his breath fogging the inside of his glass, his hands still. For a moment, Kieren wondered if his old antagonist was experiencing a stroke of some kind until he remembered he was just being a dick. As usual.

 

‘We’re closing!’ Kieren said, going round the bar and picking up the keys from under the register in passing.

 

Gary’s adam’s apple jumped a couple of times - as if it was trying to wave the last of the drink inside his throat - but Gary set the glass down without chugging it first, blinking, before turning his gaze to Kieren’s chest for an instant.

Kieren slid one of his long fingers inside the key ring and made them jangle like a cheap and short string puppet.

 

‘Come on, Gary. Get out. Now.’ Kieren said, stopping a few inches from the man’s table.

 

Gary sighed and looked inside his glass. He picked up the pint again and drank the last of the beer in one noisy gulp, before setting the glass against the table, hard.

Kieren waited for Gary to get up, but he stayed seated, like a big bold underlining of his affront so far.

 

‘I’ll let you keep the glass.’ Kieren said, with a soft voice, like a mother trying to negotiate with her child.

 

Gary scoffed, the barest of smile lingered on his lips. He turned towards Kieren, still avoiding to look straight into the ginger’s eyes.

 

‘Are you going to tuck me in bed as well, you poof?’

 

Kieren had endured so many different slurs from the man who onced force fed him Blue Oblivion that this one felt almost like a caress. The man’s low inebriated voice wasn’t helping.

 

‘If you want me to. Anything to get you out of here, love.’

 

Kieren was counting on Gary’s homophobia to get a reaction. Anything but the scruffy stinking man staring at his cold and white neck, still and silent. His lack of comeback felt scarier than any threats or mishandling he had subjected him to in the past.

 

‘I knew I made you hard, Walker.’ Gary got up and Kieren jumped and stepped back, making him smirk. ‘There’s something about you, Walkers, something making you wet yourselves everytime I’m near.’

 

Gary grabbed his glass and, for a moment, Kieren thought he was going to smash it in the hold of his damaged hand.

 

‘I used to make your sister cream her knickers so much.’ Gary said, walking over to the bar and bending over, staggering, setting the glass in the sink. He straightened up and huffed.

 

‘I’m sure you know,’ Gary said, turning towards Kieren and finally meeting his pinpricked eyes. ‘In your degenerate fam, you must talk about how I make you all so hard and wet. Getting you off, is it?’

 

‘Get out.’ Kieren’s voice was hoarse and so low that he scared himself almost as much as Gary was in this moment.

 

Gary took two fast steps forward, as if he was going for Kieren’s throat. Kieren flinched as Gary stopped an inch from his face, staring into his dead eyes, smiling like he had hooks in the corners of his mouth that a demented surgeon was pulling apart.

His breath smelled of beer and bile. Kieren resisted an animalistic urge to headbutt the man. Gary puffed out his chest and straightened his back, assessing the young undead. He bend his neck right and left, making it crack. Kieren scoffed at the display, the fear still holding onto his guts.

Gary lowered his gaze to Kieren’s parted lips before heading for the door.

 

As soon as the door slammed shut, pain and confusion overcame Kieren as his shoulders started shaking under the strength of his sobs.

 

***

‘I would have killed him.’

 

Kieren smiled.

 

‘Amy...’  He said, putting his hand on hers, startling her. The coldness, she could feel it now. He kept forgetting.

 

‘Seriously. I would have german-suplexed him and then ripped his head from his body. With my teeth.’ Amy said, baring her teeth and growling.

 

‘I guess that’s the difference between you and me.’

‘Our muscles?’ Amy said, pumping her biceps and pouting.

 

Kieren laughed and reached for a tissue to wipe the grey snot from his nose. He stared at it for a moment before answering.

 

‘Our spirits.’

‘I beg to differ. We are BDFFs. Our souls are a perfect match. We could control a jaeger together.’ Amy replied, lowering her arms and raising a knowing eyebrow.

 

Kieren let his body down, lying on Amy’s bed, while she stayed seated on the edge of the covers.

 

‘Our souls, maybe.’ He said, closing his eyes. ‘I’m talking about our spirits. You’re a warrior, like Jem. I’m a...wallflower.’

 

‘A wallflower who once pushed Gary so hard that he fell against a table, arse over tit. A wallflower who smashed a recording device down because he was unjustly accused...as I’ve been told. Talk about brilliantly designed wallpaper.’ Amy said, her voice softening down.

 

‘You’re right,’ Kieren said after a short pause, ‘I don’t know what happened. Since Simon left Roarton and you died...again...I don’t know...I can’t react anymore. It just slides over me like water on a duck’s feathers. Until I’m alone and it all rushes over me; drowning me.’

 

He paused again.

 

‘I mean, I don’t really care. It’s not important. As long as I don’t get hurt-’

 

‘You call being insulted and threatened by that piece of trash not getting hurt?’ Amy interrupted with a squeal of outrage.

 

Kieren shrugged - which was harder to do lying down than one could imagine.

 

‘That’s not really bad, I guess. I don’t know. It’s been worse. And I can’t hurt him...now. I can’t retaliate. I can’t! It’s like. So many things have changed since you all left and-’ Kieren rubbed his face with both hands. A tic. He could not really feel his own hands on his face, no more than he could feel his own face. Or even fatigue, really.

‘I don’t know. He’s gone really bad. Like. He’d always been pathetic but...now-’

 

‘Now, you actually pity him.’

Kieren opened his eyes.

‘Yes. Now, I feel for him.’

 

***

 

‘You remember when I dated your sister?’

 

Kieren took a deep breath in and tried to relax his body. He felt as stiff as a plank and out of everything.

 

‘Vaguely.’

 

Gary took a swig from the can of Guinness he had been holding close to his chest. He muted the TV - which had been showing some generic old Christmas animated film - and burped loudly.

Kieren wrinkled his nose.

 

‘I don’t remember meself. Was so fucking pissed all that it lasted!’ Gary said, smiling before bringing the can to his lips again.

 

‘Is this going somewhere or are you looking for new and exciting ways to insult me and the people I love?’ Kieren said, extending one leg out and shifting position lightly, his bum starting to get stiff for sitting so long on the burned out rug in Gary’s living room.

 

He wondered who had placed the rug there. Who had cared enough to pick the decoration from some flea market in a big city, somewhere, and brought it back, and settle it where people were expected to kick back and take their shoes off.

Someone thoughtful enough and with a sense for aesthetics to push them to decorate the place and isolate naked feet from the cold wooden floor.

 

‘I don’t know where this is going, smartface. No more than you.’ Gary drank a few long gulps. ‘I don’t know.’

He peered into the can for a second before turning his gaze to Kieren’s chest. Still. Not. Breathing.

 

Kieren felt an urge to cover himself up with both his arms crossed in front of him. The surge of modesty was weird and at odds with the big Christmas jumper he was wearing. Combine that with his need to appear unreachable to Gary’s...whatever - stare, touch, insults, whathaveyous - made him keep his arms tensed on his sides, his fists clenched and digging into the paper thin rug.

 

‘I don’t know how you work.’ Gary muttered to himself, loud enough for Kieren to frown.

 

‘I don’t know how _you_ work.’ Kieren said, flashbacks of childhood games coming to him, ungreeted.

Kieren searched for Gary’s drunken gaze and locked his eyes into his. ‘I don’t understand how you can live like this. Live like this and then ask me to spend Christmas eve with you.’

 

‘I didn’t ask you for anything.’ Gary said, the corners of his mouth pulling downwards. ‘I never asked you for anything.’

 

‘I am here. At your request. And you’re asking me if I remember when you were dating Jem. And I’m asking you how you can like this, make my life as painful as you could for years, how you can, then - and after a very unpleasant dick measuring contest at the Legion - stare at me on Christmas eve at the cemetary, your clothes stinking of sweat and vomit, and asking me to get you home.’

 

‘Watch-’

 

‘Asking me to get you _home_ and, then, after I carried you half of the way, enduring your drunken muttering and occasional shouting in the streets of Roarton, while everyone is enjoying their eggnog or pudding or whatever, once in your empty cans-filled home, ask me to stay.’

 

Kieren was lost in the green of Gary’s eyes, his stare unwavering, a sour taste in his mouth.

Gary had been holding up his stare without really looking back into his eyes. His gaze seemed lost in something behind Kieren’s head, as if he was seeing right through him, seeing his cogs turn and click.

 

Gary blinked, shut his eyes, took a deep breath and, reopening them, finally averted Kieren’s angry whites.

 

‘You can get the fuck off.’ Gary said to his beercan.

 

‘I can. I will.’ Kieren said. ‘But not until I get some answers.’

 

Gary turned the Guinness between his rough fingers, pondering. His face stiffened as he gained momentum and threw the almost empty can hard at Kieren, who dodged it in time for it to hit the wall where he had been resting his head.

Kieren got up so fast he would have gotten dizzy from the blood rushing to his brain if he had any left.

 

‘Is it a fight you want, Gary? Is it?’ Kieren screamed.

 

The man looked startled but didn’t move from his slouched position on his couch.

 

‘D’you think I’m still the lil boy you could bully at school when Rick wasn’t around? D’you think I’ll just take it? Take your fucking mood swings and hope you would still say “hi” to me the next day?’

 

Kieren was still screaming, his fists clenched by his sides so hard he could almost feel his fingernails digging into the soft flesh of his palms, like phantom limb syndrome.

 

‘What d’you want from me, Walker?’ Gary said, looking past Kieren’s contorted face.

 

‘What do I want from you? What do I _fucking_ want from you, Gary? _I_ want _nothing_ from you. _I_ need nothing from _you_! _You_ asked for _my_ help. I gave it to you. For bloody Christmas! Fuck everything that happened since Simon disappeared and Amy d- Fuck all the night-long discussions we had after pub closed and your “mates” were fast asleep in their tidy lil homes. Fuck your pretend confessions. Fuck charity. And fuck _pity_. Fuck your drinks and your pride. Fuck your HVF flashbacks and your night sweats. Fuck you. _Fuck everything about you!_ ”

 

Kieren was shaking now, hard. His voice was breaking and tears were running down his face, not that he could really feel them.

 

‘I need nothing from you rotters.’ Gary said, his eyes almost wide open.

 

‘I am not leaving. Not until you face whatever the fuck you’ve been up to these past months and tell me, upfront - no games, no chasing, no pushing away, no hitting. Just you. And me. Now.’

 

Kieren took a step forward making Gary jump. He looked so different, there, his arse set in his couch, his hands shaken up by nervous tremors against his military trousers, his beard unkempt and thick, his eyes wet and lost, his lips defined by white dried up saliva.

He looked ten years older. Close to death, even.

An old, sad, residue of a man they would show you in ads for some helpline, surrounded by an artistic blur, a macro of his eyes and hands, with a hopeful yet depressing message taking form onto the screen while the camera panned out on the man’s back, a TV displaying statics in the background.

 

‘You’ve gone paranoid, Walker.’

 

Kieren slammed his fist in the cushion against which Gary was sitting, making him jump again. He tightened his jaw as Kieren leaned in a bit closer, still mostly standing up, menacing.

 

‘What do you want from me?’ Kieren said, enunciating, his left arm tensed against the headboard, trembling.

 

‘No-thing!’ Gary spat.

He looked smaller, somehow, younger as well. A child with an old man’s wrinkles set deep into his skin.

 

Kieren took a deep breath.

 

‘You got me home- Thank you. Very much. Now go away.’ Gary said too quickly. ‘I don’t need anything from your fairy arse.’

 

Gary was averting his eyes. If he had been looking back at Kieren, he would have noticed his breath catching up in his throat and his chest shaking at Gary’s first ever words of thanks.

 

‘What happened to you?’ Kieren said, straightening up and shaking the pins and needles from his arms. The cushion was hollowed, keeping the form of his fist.

 

‘How many more fucking questions d’you think you have in that little poofy Christmas sack of yours?’

 

‘How many would you like me to have?’ Kieren said, raising his eyebrows.

 

‘Very funny.’

 

Kieren picked a plush out from his Christmas jumper. The upside-down reindeer grounded him and he looked around for Gary’s grandfather clock.

 

‘Gonna piss off to your coach before it turns into a pumpkin, then?’ Gary said, his legs jiggling nervously up and down.

 

‘Very funny.’ Kieren said, not even attempting to hide his smile. Since the Blue Oblivion debacle and the dismantlement of the HVF, their back-and-forth felt more like games than failed sexual assaults. ‘Didn’t know you could read.’

 

‘I can’t. But there’s always _Disney_!’ Gary said, making a face with his high-pitched “Disney”. His hands went self-consciously to his thighs and he stilled his jiggling legs with a pressure from his hands.

 

‘I’m off.’ Kieren said, looking at the front door. ‘Merry Christmas. Dick.’

‘Merry dicks to you too. Wish you tons of cocks coming your way.’

 

‘Cheers.’ Kieren said, finally heading for the door.

 

As he reached for the handle, he felt a shiver running up his spine and shook it off as a physical manifestation of his discomfort.

Discomfort to leaving Gary alone. Homophobic, sexist, and alcoholic that he was, it was Christmas. And he had seemed to calm down, rehumanise since everyone but some usuals from the Legion as well as Dean turned their back to his need to look for trouble.

The HVF was deader than the winter trees and Gary Kendal was no more than a too-young-to-be-old fool.

 

‘Fuck off, then!’ Gary said from the couch, bottles rattling and fabric fumbling.

Kieren opened the door and, as the cold winter wind rushed in, shivered again. Hard.

 

Cold.

Wind.

 

‘Gary?’ Kieren’s voice was too loud and his body felt too small.

 

‘What with you again?’ Gary’s voice came from behind a wall of water and algae. ‘D’I have to walk the princess home?’

 

Kieren shivered again and his teeth chattered. Burning tears fell down his cheeks.

 

Burning.

Tears.

 

‘Gary.’

 

Kieren’s voice was not his. Kieren’s voice was too loud and too low. It was outside and deep within. It was everything but really there.

It wasn’t as real as what he felt.

 

He felt Gary behind him, his acrid breath tapping against his left ear.

Kieren turned around, his nose scraping at Gary’s beard. The man clinked but did not back away.

Kieren opened his mouth and closed it. And opened it again. And closed it.

He grabbed Gary’s hands and his lips pursed as he brought them to his chin. The tepid fingers were almost hurting him, like pins and needles being forced out.

 

Pins and needles.

 

‘I can feel you.’ Kieren said, his voice returning to his throat with another gush of wind rushing through the open door and pushing at his back.

 

Gary took one of his hands off of Kieren’s, almost gently, and brought it to the strawberry blonde haired man’s throat.

He rested his warming grip on Kieren’s throat.

 

Kieren didn’t move. He wasn’t looking at Gary, he wasn’t looking outside. He was inside himself. He could almost feel it. It was almost there.

 

The beat.

 

When his veins pulsed for the first time since he died, Gary leaned in and pressed his thin lips to Kieren’s pink ones.

 


End file.
